She was white with years. The mountain wind was chill, too, for all that the sun had shone throughout the midsummer day. It was well to sit before the peat-fire. The croft was on the slope of a mountain, and had the south upon it. North, south, east, and west, other great slopes reached upward, like hollow green waves frozen into silence by the very wind that curved them so, and freaked their crests into peaks and jagged pinnacles. Stillness was in that place for ever and ever. What though the Gorromalt Water foamed down Ben Nair, where the croft was, and made a hoarse voice for aye surrendering sound to silence? What though at times the stones fell from the ridges of Ben Chaisteal and Maolmòr, and clattered down the barren declivities till they were slung in the tangled meshes of whin and juniper? What though on stormy dawns the eagle screamed as he fought against the wind that graved a thin line upon the aged front of Ben Mulad, where his eyrie was: or that the kestrel cried above the rabbit-burrows in the strath: or that the hill-fox barked, or that the curlew wailed, or that the scattered sheep made an endless mournful crying? What were these but the ministers of silence? There was no blue smoke in the strath except from the one turf cot. In the hidden valley beyond Ben Nair there was a hamlet, and nigh upon three-score folk lived there: but that was over three miles away. Sine Macleod was alone in that solitary place, save for her son Alasdair Mòr Òg. "Young Alasdair" he was still, though the gray feet of fifty years had marked his hair. Alasdair Òg he was while Alasdair Ruadh mac Chalum mhic Leòid, that was his father, lived. But when Alasdair Ruadh changed, and Sine was left a mourning woman, he that was their son was Alasdair Òg still. She had sore weariness that day. For all that, it was not the weight of the burden that made her go in out of the afternoon sun, and sit by the red glow of the peats, brooding deep. When, nigh upon an hour later, Alasdair came up the slope and led the kye to the byre, she did not hear him: nor had she sight of him, when his shadow flickered in before him and lay along the floor. "Poor old woman," he said to himself, bending his head because of the big height that was his, and he there so heavy and strong, and tender, too, for all the tangled black beard and the wild hill-eyes that looked out under bristling gray-black eyebrows.